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Doing Your Best at…Whatever You Do
By Marc | April 15, 2008
Yesterday I was looking through Sermonaudio.com looking for stuff on hypocrisy within the church. One of the sermons I listened to (by Dr. John Whitcomb) featured as examples the stories of Barnabas, Ananias, and Sapphira from Acts 4:32 – 5:1-10 and Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu from Leviticus 10.
While they are excellent examples of hypocrisy, I was thinking of kind of a side topic besides just that main one: Simply putting forth your best.
Ananias and Sapphira, when they sold their land, had every right to keep some of the money for themselves. But their sin lies in their deception by making it seem like they gave all for the community. They wanted to get full credit for a half-assed attempt. The church was new and an example had to be made of them: zero tolerance for lies and deception.
In the same token, Aaron’s sons gave a half-assed attempt at making an offering to the Lord. What does it matter, He probably won’t even know the difference. With this story again, with the new way of life, an example had to be made.
Other stories are scattered through scripture concerning a less-than-full-attempt at getting things done right:
Cain’s and Abel’s sacrifices (Genesis 4:2-5). The tale that always comes to mind when I think of giving your best versus giving whatever’s handy.
Uzzah and crew bringing the ark to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6). “Don’t bother with the instructions; just get it done quickly.” Also, a better job is expected out of some people.
The seven sons of Sceva (Acts 19:13-20). Before you go jumping half-cocked into something dangerous, make sure you know what you’re doing.
For my day job, I do graphics and covers for law journals. If I’m doing a series of graphs for a customer and they look okay but could look better, I could easily just take their files, convert them to whatever format is needed, and be done with it. Nobody would know any different. But, what were to happen if the customer wanted changes or they found out the lines were too thin to be easily read when printed? What if the tones in some categories were too dark or too similar to the ones right next to it? Should I still let it slip by, hoping it will just get printed and nobody complains?
Or, should I take a little extra time and make a file that can be easily altered if needed, with clear gray tones and clear, readable, attractive lines? Maybe even change the font to match the rest of the book? It may take a few extra minutes, but I feel better doing it.
Will anyone give me a pat on the back? Maybe not. Will it look better for our company and customers when an attractive product is delivered? Sure. Does it show that we care enough about our customers to give them back something better than what we were given? You betcha.
When I set up a cover in QuarkXPress, most of our periodicals have the same designs for every issue. So, the first time I set a new design, I try to make sure that this design will work for future issues. Things come into play like: Will it be easy to change the spine width? If there is a long month name, will it fit in the area allotted on the spine? If the customer uses different ink colors each issue or volume, how difficult would it be to change them? How should I lay the contents out in easy-to-figure-out styles and design (because it’s obvious the customer had a designer create this who is only thinking about this one issue, not the next one, let alone the next thirty).
Taking that little bit of time needed for setting it up right the first time makes for a more streamlined process in the future. This issue might take an hour to an hour and a half to lay it out, but the next one can be spit out in fifteen minutes, because everything is in place and easy to manipulate.
In every single thing we do or attempt, we can take one of two paths: Get it done quickly without putting forth a real effort, or letting your heart get into it and making it something you can be proud of. Heck, you might even make the world around you a tiny bit better.
Topics: Life and Living | 3 Comments »
April 15th, 2008 at 8:01 am
You should get one of those little “print” plugins that makes a printer friendly page, because sometimes I want to read what you said but I need to get going and I would print it and take it with me.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:12 am
I’m looking into getting that done, but not necessarily a print plugin, but a style sheet that would make the printout more reader-friendly without the extra garbage once you tell it to print.
The print plugins I’ve looked into are a little wiggy and confusing. But, I’ll get working on it probably after this week’s comic is done.
April 17th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Okay, I’ve gotten styles set for printing. There is no “print friendly” version, but you can print from your browser. The sidebars are gone, as well as the header and footer. As yet, I am unable to get rid of the Google ad within the posts, though.